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PACE DESIGN BY • LAUREN ROU
ART WRIGHT • THE BATTALION
Monique Toliver of Los Angelos, Calif., portrays a Native American woman, using her voice to demonstrate the injustices done to American Indians, past
and the present. The production company. Will & Company presented "American Voices" Thursday evening in the Memorial Student Center. It was the sec
ond in a series of One Person Shows as part of the MSC Current Issues Awareness "Campus with A Dream" week
‘Voices’ play provides insight
By Rhiannon Meyers
THE BATTALION
The Texas A&M administration's
recent push toward campus diversity has
called into question what it really means to
be diverse.
Thursday night, A&M students, faculty
and staff gained more insight into diversity
with the “American Voices” program, host
ed by the Memorial Student Center Current
Issues Awareness Committee.
“We’ve all become rigid mosaics,
every little color in its own right place,”
said performer Monique Toliver. “We can
no longer be satisfied with the mosaic.”
Toliver, along with Sean Moran, per
formed the play “American Voices” for an
audience of about 30 people as part of the
“Campus With a Dream" program. The
program is a one-person skit featuring
nine characters from various ethnic, cul
tural, sexual, religious and socioeconomic
backgrounds. The program features a
series of monologues from an illiterate
Latino man, a Muslim Arab-American
woman, a college-age Asian-American
female with an eating disorder, a Native
American lawyer, a black male on death
row. a homosexual Christian preacher, a
white Neo-Nazi female and a deaf
American.
Through the voices of the characters,
Toliver preached acceptance and under
standing of all cultures to preserve the
legacy of those killed in the Sept. I I
World Trade Center bombings. Toliver
said that a great variety of ethnicities and
cultures were represented in the group of
people who died that day, mirroring
See Voices on page 2
Pet food course
offered at Rudder
By Carrie Pierce
THE BATTALION
Students representing 11
nations will be on the Texas
A&M campus Jan. 26-30 to
participate in a short course on
pet food and feed extrusion.
The course will be held at
Rudder Tower, and it will be the
14th year the A&M Food
Protein Research and
Development Center has
offered this course as a service
to those in the pet food industry.
At the conference, partici
pants will learn how pet foods
are made from various raw
materials and about different
types of pet food packaging,
said Mian Riaz, head of the
extrusion technology program.
Riaz said that prior to Sept.
11, students representing 15 to
20 countries would attend, but
recently, because of travel dif
ficulties, the number has
decreased.
"We attract so many inter
national students because
this a very popular course ”
Riaz said. "No one else
offers this course in any part
of the world.”
Riaz said this course almost
sells out every year. This year,
44 students will be in atten
dance from Barbados, Belize,
Canada. England. Japan,
Mexico. South Africa,
Thailand, United Arab
Emirates and Uruguay.
Christopher Bailey, a poul
try nutritionist and professor
of poultry science will be
speaking at the event about
least cost feed formulation
and the use of computers to
formulate feeds for animals.
He will also be speaking
about formulating diets for
specific animals.
“Companies in the feed
industry are sending employ-
Annual
• Rudder Tower,
Jan. 26 -30
• Students representing
11 countries will
attend
• Participants
learn how
pet foods
are made
from raw
materials
and
different
types of
pet food
packaging
RUBEN DELUNA • THE BATTALION
SOURCE : MIAN RIAZ HEAD OF THE
EXTRUSION TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM
ees from all over to get training
in these areas and the in extru
sion," he said.
Bailey described the extru
sion as taking ground feed and
formulating it into a pellet-like
shape. Dog and cat foods are
extruded products, Bailey said.
“The advantage of this is it
cuts down on dust and pre
vents nutrient separation,”
Bailey said.
Another speaker at the
conference will be Delbert
Gatlin, associate department
head for wildlife and fisheries
science, who will be dis
cussing the manufacturing of
tlsh feed.
Edwards runs for new district slot
By Anthony Woolstrum
THE BATTALION
Congressman Chet Edwards, Class
3f 1974, said Thursday if he is re-elcct-
:d to Congress, serving the A&M com
munity would not be just a job for him,
xit a deep debt of gratitude.
Edwards is running for congressman
;n the newly drawn District 17, which
low includes Brazos County, along with
he rest of central Texas. For the past 13
/ears, Edwards has served the Waco area.
Including Edwards, there are only three
Aggies who currently serve in Congress.
Currently, A&M receives only 27
lercent of its funding from the state of
Texas, Edwards said. Yet reports show
hat more than 70 percent of students at
A&M depend on financial aid. This
eflects the fact that people are already
;etting in debt, he said
As tuition increases every semester,
Edwards said he will fight to direct fed
eral financial support to A&M. He said
he is working as a senior member of the
House Appropriations Committee in
Congress to increase funding for pell
grants and student loans to make college
more affordable.
First in a series on
candidates running in
District 17
“It should be a clear state and nation
al policy to ensure that the doors of Texas
A&M University are always open to
middle or low income students,”
Edwards said. “People should be accept
ed on hard work and proven ability, not
on their bank accounts.”
Edwards also introduced a bill to re
authorize research grant programs for
medical schools affiliated with VA hospi
tals, which would critically enhance
A&M's Science Center programs. With
the incredible research capabilities at
A&M. Edwards said, students, faculty and
staff can make a vital contribution to
issues such as national defense, homeland
security, education and agriculture.
Edwards said he enjoyed his time at
A&M because it gave him the knowledge
that put him a step ahead of everyone else.
"A&M has had a profound impact
on my life,” he said. “It gave me valu
able morals, lessons and friendships.”
While attending A&M, Edwards was
involved in the Student Senate. He
graduated magna cum laude with a
Bachelor of Arts in economics and
earned the Earl Rudder/Brown
Foundation award, which was given to
two outstanding seniors.
Through his extracurricular activities,
See Edwards on page 2
ART WRIGHT • THE BATTALION
Congressman Chet Edwards, class of '74, talks to reporters in the Memorial Student
Center Flag room Thursday afternoon.
Mars Mission Spirit
rover stops sending data
By Andrew Bridges
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Spirit rover stopped trans
mitting data from the surface of Mars, baffling engineers
Thursday and bringing the vehicle's mission to a potentially
calamitous halt.
NASA received its last significant data from the unmanned
Spirit early Wednesday, its 19th day on Mars. Since then, the
ix-wheeled rover has sent either random, meaningless radio
noise or simple beeps acknowledging it has received com
mands from Earth.
“We now know we have had a very serious anomaly on the
vehicle,” project manager Pete Theisinger said at NASA’s Jet
’repulsion Laboratory.
Engineers struggled to diagnose what was wrong with the
over. Among the possible causes: a corruption of its software
or computer memory.
If the software is awry, NASA can fix it from Earth by
teaming patches across more than 100 million miles of space,
lut if the problem lies with the rover’s hardware, the situation
Mars rover fails to send data
NASA’s Spirit rover failed to send significant
data to Earth Thursday. The rover’s hardware
is thought to be the problem.
When functioning correctly, signals
are sent indirectly from the rover
via a spacecraft orbiting Mars.
The spacecraft pass over the Orbiter
rover for eight minutes in each ,
Martian day. About 60 megabits *
of data are sent in that time.
Mars
The orbiters have a
16-hours window to
relay data to Earth.
SOURCES: NASA; Associated Press
AP
would be far more grave — perhaps beyond repair.
“Yes, something could break, something certainly could
fail. That’s a concern we have — that’s quite a serious event,”
Theisinger said.
Spirit is one-half of an $820 million mission. Its twin.
Opportunity, is expected to land on Mars late Saturday. The
twin rovers are supposed to examine the Red Planet’s dry rocks
See Rover on page 2
A&M professor aids NASA
in Mars image production
By Pammy Ramji
THE BATTALION
Mark Lemmon, a Texas A&M professor, will participate in a NASA proj
ect that will perfect the transmission of images from Mars.
“People have been looking at Mars and they wonder what is up there,”
Lemmon said. “Now we can answer their questions.”
Lemmon is currently working on operations that include the Mars
Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and the design of the Phoenix
Lander. The cost of the mission is $820 million. His research on the atmosphere
of Mars focuses on the nature and distribution of Martian atmospheric dust.
Lemmon is an associate research professor for atmospheric sciences at
A&M and holds a doctorate in planetary sciences from the University of
Arizona. His wife, Maria Escobar-Lemmon, is an assistant professor in the
Department of Political Science.
“I greatly admire him,” said distinguished professor for atmospheric sci
ences, Gerald North. “This is such a hot field which isn’t easy and I am very
excited for him.”
See Professor on page 2